OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

On the still more beautiful later. Also: Conan with Jon Stewart, Melania's photo filter, and the return of "Substance."

🚨 New show alert: On Friday, November 8, I’ll be debuting a new doozy of a show in NYC: The Mushroom Diaries - Presented by Comedian Matt Ruby.

Join me for the debut of this George Carlin-meets-Alan Watts immersive journey through the pages of the notebook I keep during psychedelic journeys. Imagine if mushrooms could give a TED Talk. It'll be smart, trippy, funny, and deep – plus there will be photos, video clips, music, and more. Come and get some satisfaction.

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OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Once upon a time, there was a boy who cried, “Wow!”

Illustration by Rashin Kheiriyeh.

It was 2019 and the child was (then) 9-year-old Ronan Mattin. He screamed it at Boston’s Symphony Hall upon the completion of Mozart’s “Masonic Funeral Music.”

After the piece finishes feel like a symphony in and of itself…

• :30 - :33 The orchestra fades out

• :33 - :36 Silence

• :36 - :37 “Wow!”

• :38 - :40 The audience erupts in laughter

• :40 - :54 Big applause

How the “wow” emerges is a big reason it’s so delightful. There is zero consciousness to it. It seems downright melodic as it glides gently across the room, like a feather descending onto the pavement.

It’s clearly youthful too. That’s probably why the (presumably) elderly crowd reacts so appreciatively to the outburst. The mere notion of a child enjoying the symphony is rather surprising. But one who is so overjoyed and shocked that he feels compelled to shriek his approval out loud? Now that’s something. It’s like hearing a positive “OK Boomer!”

The spectrum speaks

In The Emperor Has No Clothes, a child screams out that everyone is participating in a fraud. Mattin’s “wow” at the symphony is an inversion of that: It’s a kid pointing out how much what everybody just witnessed was wonderful.

Ronan didn’t mean to be disruptive, according to his grandfather (who took Ronan to the concert).

His grandson has a disorder on the autism spectrum, and often expresses himself differently than other people.

“I can count on one hand the number of times that [he’s] spontaneously ever come out with some expression of how he’s feeling,” Mattin said.

David Snead, the president and CEO of the Handel and Haydn Society [orchestra], wrote in a Facebook post that it was “one of the most wonderful moments [he’s] experienced in the concert hall.”

Folks on the spectrum often express themselves in ways the rest of us would consider bold.

At the DNC, Tim Walz’s son, Gus, respond to his father’s declaration of love for him by standing up, pointing at the stage, and shouting (through tears), “That’s my dad!”

Gus’ parents say they regard his various disorders not as setbacks but as his “secret power” that makes him “brilliant” and “hyperaware.”

Tina Brown echoed those comments in a piece about her son.

One of the joys of my life in the social churn of New York is living with a son whose inability to read the room makes him incapable of telling anything but the truth. Once, as my husband, Harry Evans, and I left a pretentious social gathering in the Hamptons, Georgie told the host sunnily: “Thank you very much. No one spoke to me really, so it was a very boring evening. The food was OK. I doubt I will come again.”

“I have never been prouder of you in my life!” shouted my husband in the car. How many times have all of us wanted to say that as we gushed about the fabulous time we just hadn’t had?

In response, a professor of psychology, Paul Siegel, wrote:

When Gus met his father’s declaration of love for him by standing up, pointing at the stage and shouting through tears “That’s my dad!,” my heart exploded…Neurotypical people have something important to learn from Gus Walz’s unfiltered love, my son’s thinking and Ms. Brown’s son’s (Georgie’s) matter-of-fact honesty. In our constant reading of others, we can miss the truth of our own experience.

Sometimes it takes a person who just doesn’t care to point out deep truths the rest of us are missing.

Death and wonder

All this wow-ness reminded me of Mona Simpson’s eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs.

Tangent: The “Opinion” label on this search result cracks me up:

Simpson: "This is the eulogy for my brother."
NY Times: "Well, that's YOUR opinion."

At the end of the (beautiful) piece, Simpson describes Jobs’ final words:

His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude.

He seemed to be climbing.

But with that will, that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.

Steve’s final words, hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times.

Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them.

Steve’s final words were:

OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.

Even while letting go, Jobs managed to retain his childlike sense of wonder. In the final moments of his own life, he was still spotting magnificence, the still more beautiful later.

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Funeral tune

Mozart was also thinking about death when he wrote the work that elicited that symphonic “wow.”

He was a Freemason (who knew?) and wrote the score to “Masonic Funeral Music” in 1785 in response to the deaths on consecutive days of two of his lodge brothers. It was originally performed at a double memorial service at the Crowned Hope Lodge. David Mailton, in The Compleat Mozart, says the work "celebrates Masonic ideals of truth, brotherhood, and love."

Think about all that. Notions of truth, brotherhood, love, life, and death delivered across the centuries via musical notes on a piece of paper, like a secret transmission from Mozart’s brain, to those violins and cellos and into the ears of a child who didn’t know he wasn’t supposed to scream out in appreciation and decided to let it rip.

Wow.

Being here

It all makes me consider the “wow”s in my life.

The emoji that most resembles my attitude is 😎. I tend to adopt a been there/done that view. Mostly, I am the rest of the audience at the symphony. I appreciate and applaud properly – and then go back to the ho hum.

Perhaps that’s why I enjoy psychedelics so much. On shrooms (or ayahuasca), I become more like that little boy listening to Mozart. I stare at trees in amazement. I am blown away by life, by this movie I’m allowed to simultaneously direct, star in, and watch. I drown in gratitude and appreciation. I can’t believe I get to experience all of this.

And then I come down. Integration is always the big challenge. I have to remember to keep searching for the “wow”s, the kind that glide across spaces I inhabit and make me laugh, applaud, and/or tear up just a little bit. Part of that means noticing how much I allow the algorithm, Netflix, my timeline, dopes, and capitalism to steer my brain. Yikes.

Our society tends to avoid the dying, shush children, and ignore the musings of the disordered. We also scoff at people talking about the dream they had last night or someone recounting a recent drug trip. But perhaps these people deserve more of our attention.

Sure, like any of us, they can be full of crap. But other times, they’re teaching us.

They’re the ones shining a light on objects of beauty the rest of us walk right past. They’re the ones pointing out the truth in the shadows. They’re the ones screaming, “Wow.”

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Comedy

🃏 Substance: My latest special/doc is back online (we took it down due to some issues re: drug related content but don't worry about that). It features four shows – and each one I'm on a different substance (including 🍄, w33d, b00ze). It's a solid watch and people dig it. Check it out.

🃏 Jokes: Get ‘em on my social media: Instagram – TikTok – Threads – X – Substack Notes.

🃏 NYC: GOOD EGGS is uptown every Monday night at 7:30pm at the new NY Comedy Club on the Upper West Side. Also go these other weekly shows in NYC: HOT SOUP (Tuesdays) at Comedy Cellar and GOOD EGGS (Wednesdays) at NY Comedy Club (East Village).

🃏 FUNNY HOW: I have another newsletter all about the craft of doing standup. Check it out. Recently there:

• Writing "how to"s from Churchill, Seinfeld, and more

• The rake bit as life philosophy

• Tell-it-like-it-is vets offer advice to newer comedians

• On being vulnerable vs. just telling jokes

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10 Quickies 🎯

1. She fed me tea and oranges that came all the way from China...so I told her that wasn't very eco-friendly (carbon footprint!) and lectured her about composting.

2. I meditate and that surprises a lot of people. "But you seem kinda angry." Yeah, I know. Imagine if I didn't meditate.

3. Old people are so old they think "literally" means literally.

4. Conspiracy theories that blame everything on a secret cabal of Jews really overestimate the ability of Jewish people to NOT complain about the people they work with. We can’t even throw a Sabbath dinner without someone kvetching about the dryness of Rachel’s challah.

5. Guy told me to “touch grass.” Does it count if my lungs are what’s touching it?

6. Ironically, wearing camouflage does a terrible job of hiding your political views.

7. The Criterion Closet just seems like people showing off how much they like weird art films I've never heard of. I need a person on that show to stop shaming me for being ignorant of some French New Wave director’s entire oeuvre and just pick "Liar Liar."

8. Isn't Raya a form of eugenics?

9. "I don't trust elites." OK, enjoy your world run by amateurs. Me? I still prefer doctors who went to med school, pilots who went to flight school, journalists who went to journalism school, and musicians who didn’t go to school.

10. You can't win a 1 year war against an enemy who thinks they're fighting a 1,000 year war. It’s something people forget every 10 years.

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In the news 📰

Hollywood: I watched this Conan/Jon Stewart conversation on YouTube…

…and the most remarkable part was, right in the middle, seeing Conan cut to an ad read where he plugs Samsung's new TV and talks about how much we all hate going to the movies and would rather just sit on the couch. No wonder Hollywood is struggling.

RIP Pete Rose: It’s a shame he never made it into the Hall of Fame before passing. Then again, I think ALL athletes should be forced to bet on their own team to win. Screw this "guaranteed contract" nonsense, let ‘em play for some REAL stakes. Vaguely related: Stop turning the lights on/off during sporting events. It's freaking me out.

‘Canes: I’m blown away that some people ignore hurricane warnings. My solution: They should name hurricanes after Russian women. No one's scared of a Milton, but everyone would totally evacuate if they knew Hurricane Svetlana was coming to town.

The masculinity crisis: Lotta talk about masculinity these days. My tip for the fellas: Do something hard. Literally anything. Prove you can accomplish a challenge. Find a thing that is difficult to do that you can stick with longer than others. That's a big part of what the world wants from men.

Filtered: I was blown away by the look of Melania’s book promo video:

After seeing that, I’m pretty sure this is…

OK, ya made it. Thanks for reading. Truly appreciate it. And fyi, there are currently 15,920 subscribers here. Wow!

-Matt

P.S. Don’t forget about my podcast. It’ll make your commute smooth.